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CMA’s mood boosted over fines for anti-depressant

The CMA has fined a number of pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, for anti-competitive conduct and agreements in relation to the supply of anti-depressant drug paroxetine (albeit not as quickly as it originally intended to do, as we reported in our blog post here).

GSK had settled litigation with several generic drug companies following allegations that the generic products would infringe GSK’s patents. The settlement terms included cash payments as well as an effective transfer of profit margins by permitting the supply of limited volumes of product to the market in place of GSK. The CMA found that these terms prevented the generic companies from entering the paroxetine market and deprived the NHS of price falls averaging 70%.

This is the first UK decision to consider the application of competition law to patent settlement agreements, and only the second such decision (following Servier) to include an abuse of dominance allegation alongside the Article 101/Chapter I infringement. The timing is noteworthy – appeals in Lundbeck, the first Commission patent settlement decision, were heard a few months back, and the judgment must be due later this year. Having taken considerably longer than anticipated to reach the decision, the CMA has been left with a difficult choice of waiting for the General Court decision, knowing it would mean further delay but a possibly more robust legal basis for their own infringement finding, or pressing ahead, with the risk that any significant set-back for the Commission at European level could have an impact on how appeal-proof the CMA’s own decision is.

As yet, the text of the CMA’s decision has not been issued, but we may perhaps expect an approach which is somewhat different to the Commission’s, to hedge against these uncertainties.

The total fine by the CMA was just shy of £50 million, which included a fine of £37.6 million against GSK alone. The CMA clearly remains intent upon tackling abuses of competition law which impact the public purse. More significant for GSK and the other pharmaceutical companies involved is likely to be the potential level of follow-on damages. The Department of Health is highly likely to make a claim, and other generic companies may well also follow the pattern established with the claims that followed the OFT’s abuse finding in relation to Reckitt Benckiser’s withdrawal of Gaviscon (see here).

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